


5 Times Cas witnessed Winchester emotional avoidance and 1 time he didn't

by AnOddSock



Category: Supernatural, The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Drunkenness, Gen, Hangover, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:34:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28153950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOddSock/pseuds/AnOddSock
Summary: Trying to help Dean"Anytime I had a problem and I threw a grenade launcher, boom! Right away, I had a different problem"Winchester and Sam"I'm in a perfect utopia, and I have a stomach ache"Winchester to be more forthcoming with their feelings is harder than Cas anticipated. So hard, in fact, that he's starting to wonder if it's even possible at all.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 20
Kudos: 18
Collections: SPNColdestHits





	1. Chapter 1

Cas does not want visitors.He’s not sure if it’s the Bad Place French Connection cocktail that Janet gave him[1]—apparently strong enough to get an Immortal Being under the table, and certainly now proven to take its toll on this particular Angel— or the fact that he’s a terrible, colossal failure, but he doesn’t want to talk to anyone.

The creak of the office door has him groaning into the wooden desk top where he’s currently resting his forehead. He tries to sink into the wood grain, to become one with the furniture by sheer force of will, but of course he fails at that too.

The now familiar “Hey, bud.” makes him groan a second time and roll his head to the side. The cool, smooth surface is pleasant against his cheek as he looks up at Eleanor’s face.

“Go away.”

“I take it it didn’t go well?” Michael chuckles from behind Eleanor. Cas finds the strength to flop one arm onto the tabletop and buries his face in the crook of his elbow.

“That’d be a no, then,” Eleanor says. “Do you think he’s okay?” She asks, in what Cas assumes is supposed to be a low tone.

He hears a bottle—several bottles—clink and the grating sound of them being dropped back into the trash can. 

“Given the amount of Bad Janet’s knock off cocktails he seems to have consumed, I’m going to say he’s definitely not okay.” Michael’s voice is very soothing, Cas wonders how he hasn’t noticed before now.

“Do you want to talk about it, maybe strategise a little?” Eleanor asks, laying a hand on his arm.

“Failure,” he mumbles into his coat sleeve. 

“I’ve been there, Castiel. It took me—”

“Eight hundred and two attempts, I recall.” He sits up, or rather, slumps backwards into Michael’s office chair, letting it swing slightly from side to side on squeaky springs. “Winchesters.” He squints at the ceiling and waits for the paint to stop menacingly swirling back.

Eleanor and Michael share a look. Cas doesn’t care to decipher the meaning, not when his own thoughts are coalescing into something deeper and more important.

“Maybe I’m not a failure, perhaps I’m being sabotaged.”

“What’s that now?” Michael asks, wringing his hands.

“Winchesters.” Cas growls again. “Their absolute stubbornness and refusal to give in, or, or….talk. They’re the problem, I am—magnificent. An angel of the lord.”

“You’re also a little drunk,” Eleanor interjects.

“Beside the point. There’s a difference between losing and just not being allowed to win, and I think I am the latter. Winchesters, the bane of every greater being's existence, and now the bane of mine.”

“Is this a human thing?” Michael stage whispers.

“What?”

“This,” there’s a hand that waves out of the corner of his eye and Cas rolls his head away so the movement doesn’t make him nauseous. “Blaming someone else for things going wrong, refusing to accept defeat?”

“I’m starting to think it’s an Architect thing. But to be fair, he does have a point. They are extremely set in their ways,” Eleanor says animatedly, half laughing.

“And I’m not just drunk,” Cas replies, though no-one asks. “I’m also hungover.”

“That would be the cocktails biggest and greatest effect, yes.”

Another look between them, another missed opportunity to be part of some silent communication. The ceiling does not offer any helpful thoughts on the situation.

“Well look,” Michael begins, rather too chipper for Cas’s current state of existence. “You can try again to fix—”

“Nope.” Eleanor stops him with a word, and a raised hand.

“Change—”

“No, dude.”

“Improve?” Michael asks, impatience clear in his tone. The room is saturated by Cas’s own impatience, it makes the air feel so thick he thinks he could chew on it.

“Mmm, not really what we’re going for,” Eleanor says, sitting sideways on the desk.

“Fine, okay, uhh, what is the goal here again?”

“We’re just trying to… nudge? Yeah, nudge Sam and Dean along on their… what was it?” She turns to Cas, head tilted.

“Personal journey of enlightenment in the aim of a better life lived on earth, I believe was the phrase we settled upon.”

“Right. Remember Tahani’s mood board? We had a biiig brainstorming session?” Eleanor addresses Michael, Cas goes back to his staring contest with the paint.

“I remember Jason calling it mission P-joe-itao-abl-lon, yes,” Michael says, drawing out the acronym until it is vaguely pronounceable.

“It’s a mouthful,” Cas groans.

“It’s not a clearly defined goal, I'll give you that.” Michael points, at Cas. Cas narrows his eyes in return—if he looks at Michael wrong there are two of him, and they blur somewhere around the middle in a way that looks like dancing.

“Yeah, well, torture might be easy big guy, but getting the Winchesters to be better at communicating is a wh-oooole other level.” Eleanor pats Michael on his lapels as she jumps to her feet.

“I’m going to fail,” Cas says again and it’s suddenly very funny. Instead of a short sojourn in the good place before he can take them back to earth to live in better emotional health for the rest of their lives, he’s going to spend eternity trying to concoct situations to force the brothers to face their emotional inner lives.

It’s hilarious. And disastrous. And there aren't enough liquor stores in the universe to help him drown his very self inflicted sorrows.

The door opens again and Cas closes his eyes, listening in to the voices and picturing the auras that enter the room He’s spent enough time around them to know their shapes and colours by now.. Jason. Tahani.

“Oh, is this a team meeting? We haven't had a team meeting in days, why didn't you call us?” Tahani asks, her heels sound like several tiny horses parading into the room, Cas resists the urge to giggle.

“We're on operation ‘cheer up Castiel’,” Michael says. Cas isn't sure he needs cheering up as much as he needs a memory wipe himself to pretend his failures never happened.

“Where’s Chidi?” Eleanor asks and Cas cracks open an eye to watch them all talk as though he isn’t here. Maybe he isn’t, maybe he achieved his goal of becoming an angel-chair-desk hybrid. An anch-esk, Dean might say. 

Well the neighbourhood reset[2]and they think they’re on a case, again. They really don’t take vacations do they?” Tahani speaks clear as bell, and Cas sighs, if only everything was so clear.

“So Chidi is…?” Eleanor waves her hands, hoping to get to the point.

“Currently talking to Sam, about something or other, pretending to be…” Tahani flips hair over her shoulder. “Worried about something, involved in something? I think really it has devolved into a philosophical discussion over the battle of good and evil.”

Poor Dean, currently being deceived into believing he’s living a life, while he’s actually living several versions of several different lives while Cas tries to make things better for both of them.

Poor Sam, too. Trapped in a repeating set of motions, just like that time At Big Bad Block Rock—or wherever it was Cas’s brother played the boys like a fiddle, Cas can’t recall and everything is blurring. The room isn’t swirling exactly, but he feels like a spinning top, going round and round and around the same set of issues and no closer to fixing the problems he came here to correct. No closer to keeping his promise to Sam or Dean or getting them home again.

Eleanor smiles, nodding. “Sounds like my guy.”

“Jason and I excused ourselves.”

“Yeah, once I realised they weren’t talking about, like, an actual battle, with guns and swords and cannons,” Jason makes a series of explosive sounds and slashing movements. “I got bored. If you can’t even shoot a gun in a battle, there should at least be pirates, or bears!”

“Bears? How did you get from pirates to bears?” Eleanor asks. “You know what, never mind.”

Michael claps his hands, gets everyone’s attention. “Seen as we’re all here—Janet?”

“Yes, Michael?”

Cas groans, remembering the last thing she appeared with and the state it’s left him in now.

“Let’s see if we can get something to help Castiel with his drunk-hangover, hmm? And have a team meeting.”

The gang gathers around, and Janet puts a glass of something green and softly smoking into Cas’s hand and smiles encouragingly at him.

“Now look, I know it was a bit of a blow that Dean getting attached to Miracle the dog—”

“Still a dumb name, by the way,” Eleanor pipes up.

“Aww, no, I think it’s sweet!” Tahani says. Jason nods, Eleanor rolls her eyes. Cas feels a little better with the green sludge in his stomach, soaking up whatever was left of the nausea inducing cocktail.

“Anyway, so being attached and loving to one animal didn’t make him open up to his brother or the wider world the way we hoped, but we have progress! Let’s not lose sight of that.”

“So we get to keep the dog?” Jason asks, face alight.

“Yes, the dog stays, it’s a step toward his inner… umm, whatever, a little nudge.”

“Right,” Eleanor agrees, turning to stand beside Michael, neither of them bothered that Cas is still in the chair of the Architect, and not contributing. “We just need more of a nudge. So, buddy, any more ideas?”

All four pairs of eyes turn to him and Cas gulps, and sits a little straighter. The glass in his hand is no longer trembling, and he downs the rest of its contents in one long drink. Janet reappears and clears away the glass before it’s even left a ring on the desk.

Cas feels a little steadier, and a little stronger, and a little ashamed of his breakdown. But he can’t let the Winchesters down and, as he looks around the room, he realises he’s not in this alone.

He swipes a hand across his mouth, rights himself in the chair, smooths down his shirt, and gets back to business. They’ll get Sam and Dean where they need to go. They’ll get everything fixed.

Attempt thirty two may have been a bust—as Eleanor would say—but what’s to say attempt thirty three won’t be the one that succeeds?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No plot, only crack

Castiel’s thoughts are punctuated every few seconds by another deafening bang. Sam and Dean have definitely found a rhythm, and they’re not slowing down. Looking frantically through Michael’s paperwork for the clause that will tell him what to do in this scenario, but so far finding nothing, the pounding sound is only getting louder and nearer. It had started so well, so simply, how had it come to sledge hammers and property destruction?

“They’re destroying things out there!” Tahani’s voice cuts through his slight panic.

“They’re destroying everything, they’re destroying the—the  _ there _ out there,” Chidi adds, flinching back from the door where he’d been looking through the peephole.

“I am aware,” Cas replies, clipped. “I think the whole neighbourhood is aware,” he says under his breath.

Tahani takes another look at the screen showing what’s happening in the foyer. Cas watches her, with her arms folded, eyebrows raised. “Yes, they’re really going at it. They look good doing it too.”

“Are you…  _ fawning _ after the men destroying our carefully curated creation?” Chidi asks, with an incredulous laugh, even as they all jerk at a sudden, much louder sound of destruction.

Sam and Dean are really trying to tear this place down to the studs to see what’s making it tick. Cas is sure they won’t expect to find a frazzled old friend and several layers of magical sticky tape trying to keep the whole operation afloat, but if he doesn’t remember how to put a stop to this soon that is exactly what they’ll find. 

“I’m not fawning, ladies don’t fawn Chidi, I am… admiring. And there is plenty to admire.”

Cas throws more paperwork aside, it seems to be mostly notes on song writing, and they're not even good songs.

“Well you might consider helping before they make it in here and decide we’re the next on their list of things to bash to pieces,” Chidi says, and Cas is fully aware of the change of octave in his voice and the speed with which he’s speaking and—yes the clutching of the stomach and the brow sweat are fully expected too.

He throws his hands up and snaps his fingers, and the banging ceases in an instant. Oh, if only everything was so easy. “I think I might hate them. I think I might actually be feeling rage towards my best friends.” Tahani and Chidi exchange worried looks and Cas rubs a hand down his face. “I know what you’re thinking,” he adds.

“That Michael said  _ not _ to re-start the neighbourhood while he was away?” Tahani gestures emphatically, and Cas smiles tiredly, still endeared to how much she cares about doing things right. “That we don’t have a plan to restart again and you just reset everything anyway?”

“Yes, that.”

“Ohh, Michael is gonna hate the extra paperwork for another reset so soon. Wait, no, I bet he’ll make me do the extra paperwork because I’m the one who’s here.  _ I’m  _ going to hate the extra paperwork,” Chidi says with a groan.

“If I knew how to do a slight roll back of time… but I don’t. And this seems better than having to unflatten either of you from being pummelled by a sledge hammer, don’t you think?”

They both nod in defeat. Cas takes off his coat, and shoves file folders and notepads back into draws.

“I don’t understand where we went wrong,” Tahani says, whining a little. “All we did was try and send them for therapy. Everyone goes to therapy. I once drove Cameron Diaz to therapy myself, went for coffee, and picked Lucy Lui up from therapy on the way back home.  _ Everyone  _ does therapy, there doesn’t even have to be anything wrong! Now these two clearly have a lot a wrong—and if it’s good enough for Charlie’s Angels then it should be good enough for the flannel wearing fighters out there.” Tahani nods, like it’s decided.

“Sam and Dean aren’t just anyone, and they’re certainly not celebrities,” Cas reminds her. As much as Dean might think he’d like to be a rock star, Cas knows they both hate having too much attention centred on them. Maybe that’s it, maybe they’re coming at this all too head on.

It had started so well, they’d followed the plan exactly until...

* * *

“What do you think of this, Sammy?”

“What?”

Dean gestured, eyes wide and then rolling dramatically. “This bizarre request of Jack’s that led us here, to this therapist. I dunno, it all seems…”

Sam rolled up the magazine he’d been reading and levelled Dean with a look. “I know last time we had that session with the shapeshifter it didn’t go well, but that’s probably why Jack thought we should try again.”

“Yeah but, this—“ Dean gestured at the wall with the bright green writing. “Seriously? ‘Welcome, Everything is fine’? It’s a bit on the nose isn’t it?”

Sam stood to examine the writing, forehead wrinkling in thought. Cas leaned closer to the monitor showing him the feed. He longed to speak to them, to just tell them what was going on, but that would defeat the entire point wouldn’t it?

“You know it is a bit eerie. Everything in here is… well it’s too perfect.”

Cas suppressed a groan. Not again.

“It’s as though the measurements are too exact, you’ve paced back and forth fifty times and it’s exactly six steps—just long enough to keep you moving in the rhythm you like when you’re nervous or irritated. Like it was made to soothe you.”

Dean’s eyebrows rose. “That’s… specific. Why do you know that?”

Sam waved a dismissive hand. “We’ve lived together for years, I remember Cas noticed too. And then there’s the chairs…”

“The chairs are suspicious?” Dean asked eagerly.

“Yes, like they want me to be comfortable. They fit me precisely,  _ me. _ When does that happen?”

“Almost never,” Dean urged Sam on. “What else?”

“Well, this message. Who would say that to a patient in a waiting room? It doesn’t feel exactly human, does it?”

“You think there’s something fishy going on here,” Dean said, crossing his arms with a smug smile while Cas, behind the door of a neighbouring room put his face in his hands. “You think we should investigate and abandon our scheduled appointment.”

“I think if there was something… supernatural at play, Jack wouldn’t begrudge us checking it out and attending a different appointment at some other, less potentially dangerous time.”

“Great.” Dean smacked his hands together. “Research?”

“Research could work—or we could just tear this place apart until we find whatever freaky magic is trying to draw us into its snare.”

Cas warded the doors and windows, threw up hasty protection sigils, and tried to get Chidi out the back door before the sledgehammers came out. They hadn’t quite made it before the destruction began.

* * *

Why couldn’t they just admit they didn’t want to go to therapy? Cas is no more able to answer that question now than he was half an hour ago, or thirty months ago, when their time in the Good Place first began. They’re just resistant to everything he throws at them. Stopping them in their tracks is the only way he knows how to get them to let go of an idea, they’re like a dog with a bone when they want to be.

It’s tiresome, and it’s getting him into hot water; broiled angel, a new delicacy, beaten into pulp by defiant humans and served with regret and a sprinkling of salt. The door flies open and Eleanor is there in a flurry, Janet close on her heels.

“Uhh, guys? Care to explain?”

“Cas reset everything,” Tahani offers.

“I can see that! I thought we agreed no more resets until we worked out what wasn’t working.” Eleanor yells.

“Well here’s three things to add to the list, umm, sledgehammers—not good. Them having a stash of weapons at all, really not working for me.” Chidi says, ticking things off on his fingers. “Therapy suggested in a note from their adopted son, not effective in the way you’d hope. Making them suspicious, that’s a no.”

“That’s four things, dear,” Eleanor says, taking his hands.

“Well they are the work of four people!” Chidi exclaims and Cas can’t fault him there. Sam and Dean alone are hard enough to control, the two of them together are quite literally an unstoppable force of the universe.

“Chidi is right, we’re working awfully hard on two of them, and we don’t seem to be getting anywhere,” Tahani says.

“I have the statistics on what went wrong this time, and how quickly,” Janet says, holding out a tablet and a small houseplant. Cas isn’t sure what the plants are for, but they make him smile, especially since she started giving him flowering ones to attract the bees.

The results are what he expects. Though it looks like the Winchesters worked it out even faster than he feared. He’s just beginning to wonder what else he can do to salvage this situation, and to explain to Michael why he had to reset while he had promised not to, Jason comes in, waving his arms.

“I can’t believe they got to destroy a room and no-one told me!”

“Would you have joined them?” Eleanor asks. “They were literally smashing down walls, that’s the opposite of what we want.”

“That’s the opposite of what everyone wants,” Chidi says with a shudder.

“No! It’s just… would’ve been cool to see,” Jason whines. Janets walks over and puts her hand on his arm. 

“I can show you the footage, and hey, how about I set up a little destructive play space for you in your house. You can smash paints and throw paint around or anything.”

“And--”

“No fire!” Eleanor interrupts. “Or explosions.”

“Fine, I’ll make do.”

Eleanor is rubbing Chidi’s back after his brief ordeal, Tahani and Janet share a look of bemusement as Jason talks about this one time he did something destructive. Cas watches it all happen, this group of people who know each other and know how to look out for one another. Sam and Dean know how to look out for each other, and only that. They know how to hunt and look for signs of something being wrong, and that’s… that’s sort of all they know. It seems like tackling their problem of lack of communication, and an inability to want to change, can’t be done head on. Cas has been going about this all wrong. The group here bonded over time, with subtle changes and each iteration being a step in the right direction. He’ll have to do that with the Winchesters too.

But where to start?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a plan for this, a very roundabout way of pasting over the finale with something humorous to soothe the wound it left in me, I just don't have a lot of plot to get us there...
> 
> Let me know if there's something you want to see though, a Good Place type scenario or something from canon SPN to be resolved? I'm open to ideas!

**Author's Note:**

> 1Invented by Bad Janet this drink has been banned in every Bad Place neighbourhood. It nothing to do with France-- which as we all know means immediate admittance to the Bad Place--but they thought the name was appropriate for a forbidden substance. Nor does it have any of the usual ingredients of a French Connection cocktail, consisting instead, among other things, of the fermented tears of drunkards and foul mouthed sea farers collected throughout the ages, and space debris from two collapsing stars as the special ingredient. It tastes like disappointment and Sunday afternoons at 4:37pm [around the time everyone realises the weekend is almost over].[return to text]  
> 2Castiel insisted that the neighbourhood accurately represent Earth, and not be twee lest Sam and Dean caught on too quickly to the altered reality. When this proved too difficult for Michael to produce who, to quote, "just wanted everything to be nice", Eleanor and Jason took charge of the scene setting. Jason had particular fun applying graffiti to every alley himself, despite Janet's insistence that she could do it with merely a thought.[return to text]  
> 
> 
> I know what you’re going to say “Socks did you just write Good Place Fanfic for a [SPN themed challenge?”](https://spncoldesthits.tumblr.com/post/635330147450535936/december-2020-prompt-fix-it-posting-dates/)And the answer is yes, and I’m not sorry about it.
> 
> There will be more chapters, eventually, I'm posting this with no pressure to get them out on a schedule (except for aforementioned challenge deadline) but for fun when I want to write something low stakes and amusing.


End file.
